something fishy is going on

In the recent post where I recounted some memorable birthdays, I did not include my birthday in 2004, but I will go into some more detail here. It was my senior year at Emory, and I asked my roommate to throw me a hot dog cookout and bowling party, and it was great. And I also told my friend Adam that what I wanted more than anything for my birthday was some goldfish. Adam agreed to get me a goldfish.

I set to work on a list of possible names for my goldfish. I hope I am not spoiling anything by telling you that I the time I spent thinking up possible names for my fish far exceeded the time I got to spend with the actual fish. Because the fish died. But I am getting ahead of myself.

My birthday was on a Thursday that year (it’s important to remember the days in this story, because there are so few of them). I got my fish at my birthday party and I was delighted that there were two, and not just the one that I asked for (Adam said that one fish looked too lonely in there). I was pretty happy because it meant I got to use two of the names from my very long list. I named the fish Bruce (after a guy who read the trivia questions at a trivia night that Adam and I liked to go to) and Green Bean (after one of my favorite foods). In a lot of the pictures of my birthday party, you can see the little guys just swimming away in the background, blissfully unaware of the awful dooms that await them.

Friday I watched them swim for awhile, and then I went to class and had lunch with Adam. “I just can’t bear to be away from them,” I remember saying. “It must be how mothers feel when they take children to day care so they can go to work. I feel like I’m missing so much of their development.” I can acknowledge that perhaps this response was “overdramatic” and that I probably have no idea what it’s like to miss your children’s developmental milestones. What I’m trying to get across is that these fish were really fucking important to me.

Saturday morning, my heart shattered into a million little pieces. I awoke, and looked over to my dresser, where I had put the bowl so I could see it when I first woke up. Green Bean was floating at the top of the bowl! What a miserable day. I had to try to get one dead goldfish out of the bowl and flush him and then study for a test. Adam did admit that the guy at the pet store might have suggested that the bowl was not big enough for two goldfish. I changed the water and tried to move on.

It was clear, though, that Bruce never recovered from losing Green Bean. On Saturday and Sunday, it was clear that he was looking for something, and he would look out at me with his big heartbroken fish eyes, seemingly asking, “Where is my brother? Where is my friend? Where is my Green Bean?” And I, dealing with my own pain, had no answers to give him.

Sunday evening, I was watching Bruce swim and ruminating on loss. How someone we had known for such a short time had affected us both so much. And then, Bruce just lost it. Perhaps the grief of being a lone goldfish was too much. But as I watched, he had what must have been the equivalent of a fish seizure, or he committed some form of fish suicide. I can still see it in my head, but it’s hard to describe. He swam into the side of the bowl at a high speed, and then swam to the top really fast, and then all of a sudden he turned over and he was dead. I HAD TO SIT THERE AND WATCH MY FISH DIE. I don’t know if anyone believed that I saw the actual moment of passing, but I am telling you, I have seen the life force leave a being. And even a being so small as a fish, well, that is hard to watch.

As you might imagine, it’s hard to just get over that. And I have not had anything, not even a plant to take care of in the past few years because it’s just too likely that I will kill it or it will die. And I don’t know exactly what has changed, if it’s sheer hope and optimism from moving to a new place and starting over, but today I got a new fish.

He is a beta and I have named him Alvin. I named him Alvin because he is red, and because I recently saw the movie “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” I just laughed every time that squeaky chipmunk talked. Plus when I come out of my room in the morning, and if Alvin is doing something zany or making trouble, I can wave my hands in the air and go, “ALVIN!” Just like Dave in the movie/tv show. It will be hilarious.

So far Alvin’s favorite things to do are swim around the perimeter of the bowl, swim up to the top of the water, and hover at random places. He has this tail that looks kind of like fringe so I think he looks like he is dressed to compete on Dancing with the Stars. I have not fed him yet but the pet store lady says that he will just go apeshit for bloodworms, so now I have dried bloodworms in my apartment. It might be worth noting that I don't really have any human food in my kitchen right now, but I have dried bloodworms. Who am I? Right now he is on my kitchen counter which hopefully won’t present too many ethical problems, because I don’t really cook fish in my apartment (I don’t really cook anything in my apartment). Although it might be a salmonella risk?

Anyways, the pet store lady said he could last as long as seven years if I take care of him right, so hopefully I won’t have another sad story about fish death in seven days or something. I mean, if this goes well, who knows what I’ll get next. Maybe a plant!

Meet the newest member of the family:

My week with the pope

Have you been feeling popetacular in the past 24 hours? Do you feel the popetastic vibes in the air? Benedict XVI (or as I call him, B-16 Bomber) is in America! Now, he has a pretty packed schedule, what with mass in Yankee Stadium and speeches at the U.N. and whatnot. I know this schedule allows for B-16 to have the biggest impact on America and to see the most Catholics. But what I wanted to do was imagine what would happen if Benny was just here to visit me. This schedule has to assume that I don’t have to go to work for the rest of the week. Here is what we would do:

April 15
4:00 p.m.—The pope arrives. A very quiet evening—perhaps a walk in the park, and then the pope goes to bed early because he might be jet-lagged. Plus, we have to get up early in the morning to begin our jam-packed week.

April 16
7:00 a.m.—We go for a speed walk in the park, because a papal visit is no excuse to ignore one’s exercise. Then we go back and take showers.
8:30—Go to Krispy Kreme. Wait for the red light to go on and eat some warm and fresh doughnuts.
9:15-3:30—Driving tour of Atlanta in the pope-mobile. I will show B-16 all my favorite spots; stop at a barbeque restaurant for lunch.
4:00—Go to a happy hour for a few cocktails. Pope and I discuss my spiritual health, what heaven is like, etc.
7:00—Oh my, where did the time go? We are a bit tipsy at this point and go grab some dinner (probably Italian).
9:00-?—We stay out, go to a bar. I attempt to get the pope drunk to tell me weird Vatican secrets. Crazy late night. Go to Waffle House.

April 17
7:00—Even though we were up to the wee hours talking about the secrets of St. Peter’s, Popey and I still get up early. We go eat fried chicken and waffles for breakfast.
8:00—Go to Georgia Aquarium, which is the biggest in the universe or something.
12:00—We go to Lenox Food Court, where the pope helps me with the Great Food Court Project. We both eat at Chick-fil-a and talk about how hard it is to get chicken nuggets in Rome.
1-4:00—Pope wants to do some high-end shopping (he’s very stylish!)
4-5:00—Nap.
5-7:00—Margaritas by the pool.
7-9:00—Leisurely dinner. (Mexican?)
9:00—Play pub trivia at a local bar (2nd place!)
11:00—Come home and watch the television we recorded while we were at trivia. B-16 has totally been jonesing for new Grey’s Anatomy since the drought caused by the writer’s strike.

April 18
7:00—We eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast
8:00-1:00—We go to Six Flags and ride roller coasters til the pope gets a little too dizzy. He claims to see God on some of them.
1:15—Go to the Varsity for hot dogs.
2:00—Take the CNN Studio Tour. The pope and I do that thing at the end where you get a souvenir video of yourself reading the news. Just for kicks, we do it in funny voices and the pope does it in several languages.
5:00—We go to the place down the road where you can paint pottery and then have it fired. We primarily stick to things like chalices and other things we can give to churches.
7:00—Okay, at this point, I need to stop being so selfish with the pope. I host a small party at my apartment so that our nation’s dignitaries can meet and greet the pope. The dignitaries that I particularly hope to attract to this party include John Cusack, Barack Obama, Pete Seeger, Stephen Colbert, Bruce Springsteen, Lee Pace, John Krasinski, Albert Brooks, George Clooney and Tom Russell. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to be able to make it. I’m shooting for 60 percent.

After a wine and cheese reception, then a lovely dinner, we all go over to Stone Mountain and watch the laser show. Then we come back to the apartment and the party continues. It goes til very late and approximately 167 bottles of wine are consumed. A fight breaks out when some of the dreamy actors argue about who gets to go out with me. The pope settles it with a prayer.

April 19
7:00—We have cinnamon rolls for breakfast
8-10: We go to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and have a private conversation with Jimmy Carter. They get in an argument about religion. It’s awkward.
10-1: Go to the World of Coke. We try all the Cokes. The pope prays for forgiveness for the countries that have made crappy-tasting Coke.
1-2: we have a picnic in the park
2-4: We do Civil War-related things, like the Cyclorama and the Margaret Mitchell House.
4-8: We go to the Braves game, and the pope does that whole mass at a baseball stadium thing, because apparently he’s into that.
Rest of the evening: We are feeling kind of tired so we just get some Chinese takeout, make a Funfetti cake, and kick back and watch some movies.

April 20
9:00—We slept in. Decide to skip church.
9:15--We go get some pancakes.
10:15— Pope and I go to coffee shop to read magazines.
11:15—Go swimming
12:30—Burgers and beer for lunch.
1:30—Go for a walk, nail down all the spiritual issues that we’ve been discussing over the week.
2:30—Bookstore browsing.
3:30—go to a bar, and just hang out. Pope is getting sad because he knows he has to leave soon. We play pool.
6-8: We have a very elegant dinner at an undisclosed location. Undisclosed because I’m not sure what the height of Atlanta luxury is in terms of dinner locations.
8 pm—Pope has to leave for Rome. But we totally promise to write and call and stay in touch.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Benedict XVI, if you happen to read this, it’s not too late! I can totally squeeze this down a little bit and we can make this plan happen!

Endnote: I just tried to make a hilarious doctored photograph that would make it look like the B-16 Bomber had his arm around me. But it’s not working. So just imagine it.

sakkio it to me!

First off, I would like to thank blog reader Matthew for suggesting the title of this post. Second, I’d like to thank all the loyal blog readers who expressed their strong opinions about where to go next for the Great Food Court Project, by which I mean, thanks George and Matthew. You both suggested Sakkio Japan, and I heard you loud and clear.

Well, I almost abandoned the Sakkio plan today because of something unexpected and wonderful. I am very excited to tell all of you that there is a new restaurant in the Lenox food court! It is called Baja Bistro, and it is between Chick-fil-a and Nathan’s Famous. I almost stopped right there in my excitement, but I decided to stick with the plan and give Baja Bistro a few weeks to work out the kinks and get really great. I did get to sample a little bit of a quesadilla on a toothpick and I can report that all the correct ingredients seemed to be there (cheese, tortilla).

So I headed off for Sakkio Japan, which offers several varieties of teriyaki, tempura and veggie things. It appears to be the kind of place where people go habitually, because everyone around me in line had very specific orders. The girl in front of me asked for “just a little vegetables.” Then she gave the guys working there a hard time because they gave her “too many vegetables.” After she got her meat products, the guy asked her if she’d like some extra teriyaki sauce. She said, “just a little,” and the guy, having learned his lesson with the whole vegetable debacle, gave her just a little. But then she got mad and asked for more sauce. This girl gave me a headache and I just tried to focus on the guy who was scooping fried rice into the warmer.

So anyways, I had chicken teriyaki, fried rice and the aforementioned vegetables, which are primarily of the cabbage variety, although there were also little pieces of carrot, pea, and broccoli. It was clear that Sakkio Japan deals more with chicken teriyaki orders than the beef or shrimp options, because they had what must have been fifteen chickens grilling on the cooking device. Beef and shrimp they did only when someone ordered.

One thing I should probably mention at some point is that despite being called Sakkio Japan, everyone there was speaking Spanish to each other. But everyone was nice and efficient, which is good because Sakkio Japan had a fairly healthy line for most of the time that I sat there and observed. The restaurant garnered a mix of all genders and races, more so than any other restaurant that was in my line of sight. But only about four restaurants were in my line of sight.

Now, I’m unhappy to have to do this, but it appears the Great Food Project has a Nemesis. I have encountered this Nemesis on all previous food court trips, but hoped it was a fluke. But today I have had to upgrade this person to full-on Nemesis status.

This nemesis is the lady who cleans food court tables. Granted, this is an awful job and I probably shouldn’t make someone who cleans into a nemesis. I am generally grateful to the people who do this. But in my opinion---and let me know if you think differently---the ideal time to clean the table is when no one’s sitting there. This lady only seems to have the desire to clean at the moment that someone sits down to the table. Then she comes over and wipes it down as you’re trying to get settled with your food. The unfortunate side effect of cleaning at this point is that it’s possible for the old crumbs to get into the new food. She tries to get her dirty rag all up in the uneaten food’s business.

I will get you, Nemesis!

Other than the encounter with my new Nemesis, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Sakkio Japan. While not one of the best teriyakis I’ve ever eaten, it was one of the better meals I’ve had as part of the Great Food Court Project so far. If we were to rank the meals so far, it would probably go:
1. sautéed onion hot dog from Nathan’s
2. chicken teriyaki from Sakkio
3. Taco Bell nachos
But then, I’ve only been to four places. So take the ranking with a grain of salt.

Where will I go next? Your suggestions are welcome!

a dollar for your thoughts

Well, it is nearly impossible for me to pass by a dollar store without going in. I usually find something I want or need (wanting or needing it is usually measured against the fact that the item is only a dollar). Plus, have you ever looked closely at things in a dollar store? They are HILARIOUS.

So today I went to the dollar store, and made a list of the funny things I saw. Maybe it will become a recurring segment as I work my way through the dollar stores of the southeast. I only had 15 minutes before the dollar store closed, so maybe these items aren’t the epitome of hilarity. But these are the kinds of things I love about dollar stores.

--Noah’s Ark figurine toys. These looked kind of rubbery, and they were appropriate for kids 3 and up, I think. You got like 7 things in the package so that you could relive the story of Noah whenever you wanted. Of course you got Noah and Mrs. Noah. Then you got one pig. One pig! Noah gets credit for saving all the animals and all that the package deigned to include was one pig! So what else was in the package you ask? Bananas, bread, a bag of flour, carrots and/or corn (the items differed from every package). I mean, I know they had food on the ship, but good luck reenacting that whole two-by-two animal thing. Based on this play set, you would think that Noah was running a little grocery store or something.

--Potting soil. Nothing funny about that right? But consider that it was located on the shelf under the FAKE FLOWERS. Ponder that for awhile!

--Gummy candy. It didn’t look like gummy candy at first. It was in that old-timey looking popcorn container, like if you got popcorn at the circus. The gummy candy was shaped like popcorn, and the flavors inside the box were strawberry, watermelon, apple and…POPCORN. I guess this is designed to appeal to those people who eat gummy candy and think, hey I really wish I was eating popcorn. Or vice versa.

--Smiley face erasers. These came in a little baggie, I think you got 25 for a dollar. But none of them had smiley faces. They had straight lines for mouths. Maybe it was a statement on how no one smiles anymore.

--“Magic Beast Grow.” Okay, this one didn’t end up as funny as I first thought it was, when I read it as “Magic Breast Grow.” It was a circus animal that’s like an inch big, and then you put it in water and it grows 400%!! Then I found one that would grow 600%!!! I almost got one, but I just don’t have room in the apartment for something that could grow to 600% of its original size. I don’t care if it’s only one inch to start with.

--Speaking of things I almost bought, there’s this guy named Chef Mario, and he has a line of gag food items. It’s called Scretchghetti and Critters, and Chef Mario has cooked up a ton of critters for our prank playing enjoyment. You can get spaghetti topped with rats, earthworms and bugs that I could not even identify!

--A jumbo chalk compass. So anal-retentive kids can draw perfect circles when they’re outside playing.

Well, that’s all I had time to find. I ended up buying a pack of plastic forks to take to the office so I don’t have to wash real forks (I’m real lazy now). Guess how many came in the package? 51! Why do you think it was such a weirdly odd number? I don’t have any suggestions.

walt whitman's niece

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Do you care? I don't really read a whole lot of poetry, but on Saturday I was inspired to write a poem. I guess it is free-verse which I have always thought is the laziest kind of poem you can write because there's no rhyming or counting syllables or anything. But that is how this came out.

Waiting for the Comcast Man
-a love poem-

Between eleven and two
I will wait for you.
I hope you come early.
I might be missing a Seinfeld rerun
or something.

One hour down.
I hope you don’t come in the next 20 minutes
Because I am going to eat some pizza
for lunch
and I don’t want to share
and I don’t want it to get cold.

I don’t know what to do with myself.
I’d hate to get really involved in something
and then have to stop.
Maybe I will read a magazine.

The minutes creep from one to two.
Any minute now.
Still nothing.
Why do you make me wait?
The agony.

What is Barack Obama doing right now?

Now you are late
At what point do I call Comcast?
Maybe you came and I missed it
But I’ve been sitting on the couch the whole time!
Still I doubt myself.
Did I write down the wrong time?

You make it at 3
(an hour late)
You do not apologize
You track some dirt in
You reek of smoke
You head outside to look at some wires.

All the work seems to be outside
Fiddling with these wires.
It makes me wonder
why
I even had to be here at all.

You come back in and ask for the remote.
I guess it is time for the complicated set-up.

You turn to me and say,
“Look, I changed the color of your menu screen.
I made it prettier.”

Frankly
I preferred
the old color.

As you leave, I think
“Isn’t this the way it always is with love?”
You wait forever then it’s gone so fast
Just like the repairman from Comcast.

Book #1: War and Peace

The book: War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

What is this book about: I hope I won’t offend anyone when I offer this oversimplified explanation of the book: It’s sort of the Russian version of Gone with the Wind, except instead of the Civil War, it’s the War of 1812. And instead of the one main character of Scarlett O’Hara, there are many, many characters, and being Russian, they’re all powerfully aware of the existential crises that rage within them.

Also, as far as I can remember, Margaret Mitchell never interrupted her narrative to go on long diatribes about the nature of history, free will, the power of the individual versus the collective, etc., but Leo Tolstoy does that quite a bit.

Why did I read this book: Perhaps it is preordained that I always read Tolstoy when I move to a new place. Anna Karenina was the book I read on the airplane on that first flight out to Seattle, and I started W&P on my second day in Atlanta. Perhaps I just really like reading about peasants after a big move.

But honestly, that is just a coincidence. I have been waiting for this version of W&P for awhile because it was translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, and thus, blessed by God. Look, I don’t enough about the Russian language to completely understand why this is so, but these two are the best translators in the whole entire world. You should only read something if these people have translated it. I know this because Oprah told me so. It’s kind of weird that out of all the things Oprah has said, this is the thing that stuck with me, but there ya go. I heard they were translating this book three years ago and I have been waiting patiently ever since. So it was time for me to read this book.

What did I think of this book: I really liked the fictional parts of the book. When Tolstoy is dealing with all of his characters and the wacky things they do for love and their sanity and their country, then the book just flies by.

But this is a historical novel, and when Tolstoy is going on and on about the characters who aren’t fictional, and providing detailed analysis of battles and historical figures and whether history can ever capture anything real, well I got a little frustrated. I didn’t read 800 pages of what’s going on in these characters’ lives to be sidetracked by Tolstoy’s thoughts on the faulty science of history.

I mean, even Margaret Mitchell glossed over Gettysburg. She didn’t go into pages and pages of what the Northerners were thinking and what the Southerners were thinking and then acknowledging that we can’t even know what they were thinking because we weren’t there and we shouldn’t trust the people who were there because they’re too busy having personal epiphanies about their country and historians definitely weren’t there so we shouldn’t trust them and there’s really no one to trust but God. Was that last sentence frustrating? Well, that’s like 150 pages of this book. Granted, that’s a small percentage, but some of us wanted to get back to whether the Russian Scarlett O’Hara was going to get married or not.

What was my favorite part of this book: I generally preferred the “peace” to the “war.”

What did I learn from this book: Gosh, I know I was really supposed to learn something from these essays about history that I’ve disparaging in this review. I know there’s a lot to unpack in those thoughts and that I could probably unravel the mystery of life if I’d paid more attention to them. I’m saying I probably didn’t learn all I could have learned from this book.

But what I did learn was that war is hell, death is inevitable, and that love will redeem your soul but you can only hope that it will do so before you die.

What grade do I give this book: It feels too weird to give a grade to a book like War & Peace.

Do you want some good tips for reading this book? Perhaps you’d like to read this book to see what all the fuss is about, but you’re too daunted by the size. Well, here is my tip. Commit to reading just 10 pages a day. That sounds manageable, right? At the longest, then the book takes about 120 days, or 4 months. Some days you will read much more than that, and some days you may not have enough time to read at all. But if you read, on average, about 10 pages a day, then it’s only a four month commitment. Another good tip is to have two bookmarks, one for your place in the book and one for your place in the footnotes, because oh my, are there footnotes. My last good tip was mentioned before, which is to make sure you get the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, because if you’re accepting anything less than you might as well just read a comic book or something. But don’t ask me why that’s true.

you say it's your birthday?

Dear Readers,
I have an extremely sad announcement to make. I can no longer continue writing this blog. It takes up too much time, time I would rather devote to pursuing my country music career. So there will be no more wiggling it, just a little bit.

April Fools!

A day late!

Man, don’t you think that could have been really something? If I’d drawn it out more and gotten the entry up on the right day? I think that would have been fun. But I was too lazy.

In addition to general laziness yesterday, I was also busy celebrating my birthday, which as some readers may know, falls upon April Fool’s Day. It was a nice, low-key day, which is the way I wanted it, but unfortunately, this birthday will be forever remembered as the birthday where my Comcast service went out as soon as I sat down to watch some birthday television and read some birthday emails. So while I heard from friends and relations far and wide, the person I might have spent the most time speaking with was a Comcast representative. While Comcast was extremely sympathetic that I couldn’t watch the birthday editions of my favorite shows, they were not so sympathetic that they would fix my service immediately. It won’t be fixed, in fact, til Saturday.

Well, since I have this extra time on my hands, I thought I’d look back at some of my memorable birthdays:
April 1, 1982: I am born. To be fair, this is not a “memorable” birthday because I don’t “remember” it. But I have heard the legends of how I made it into the world. I was about a week late. When my mom went into labor in the wee hours of the morning, my dad didn’t take her at first because he thought it was an April Fool’s joke. But that might have been exaggerated because recently Mom said that she wasn’t quite sure that she was in labor. They started out for the hospital anyways, and were about halfway there when Dad realized he forgot to turn off the alarm clock that would be going off in a few hours, and that would freak out the cats, so they turned around to go home and turn off the alarm clock. That’s right, the mental health of their cats was a more important than the birth of their first child. But anyways, by the time they were headed back to the hospital, Mom was sure that this was actually labor and I emerged at 10:40 a.m. When the doctor announced it was a girl, my parents thought it was an April Fool’s joke because previous doctors had predicted that I would be a boy based on the strength of my heartbeat. I am such a trickster!

April 1, 1987: I turn five. I remember this birthday primarily because it was captured on home video. This video does not present the most flattering version of me…I got a vinyl record and jumped all around screeching and it was not attractive. It was a Randy Travis record, for anyone interested, and my first concert, Randy Travis at the Asheville Civic Center, was also a present that year as I recall. On this tape, I tend to get mad and yell at my brothers a lot, George because he kept trying to open my presents and William because he took his first steps and upstaged me on my birthday. What starts as a video of little Molly opening her presents turns into a video of baby William trying to walk. And I don’t know if our relationship has ever overcome this jealousy.

April 1, year uncertain: I’m not sure exactly whether I was turning 12 or 13 but sometime in middle school I had a birthday where I got like six CDs as presents and then went bowling with my friends. I remember that as an extremely pleasant birthday.

April 1, 1998: Sweet 16. The year that everyone in my group of friends turned 16, I remember we did a lot of scavenger hunts, because we could all drive and go around and look for things. So I remember I had a pretty cool scavenger hunt that turned mildly embarrassing when I couldn’t pump gas. The guy had to show me how. If only I’d paid more attention at the 10 previous scavenger hunt birthday parties I went to that year!

April 1, 2000: Despite being only a high school senior, I turned 18 at Emory because I was down there for scholarship interview weekend. Being interviewed on my birthday was a bit stressful, and since this was before cell phones, I called my parents on a pay phone, primarily because that was the day when all other colleges were supposed to let you know if you’d been accepted or not. But there had been a snowstorm in eastern North Carolina and so a lot of my decisions weren’t there yet. It was very frustrating to have only a brief pay phone call home and to get such crappy news. But that night the other people there interviewing took me out and got me a balloon, and I remember looking around and thinking that these people were very nice and that I could definitely see myself at school there.

April 1, 2001: Flash forward a year, when I was there. I had the most miserable birthday ever because I was extremely sick and trying to write a huge paper that was due the next day that was some ungodly percentage of my grade. All my friends in my freshman dorm came in and sang happy birthday but I was so sick and tired that I just burst into tears. A real low-point birthday.

April 1, 2003: But I would say that my highest-point birthday was turning 21 in Rome. I went to the Coliseum with a friend that was visiting and that night went to dinner with a few friends at this restaurant that was on my street that we all loved. The waiter, who we’d become friends with over the course of the semester, gave me a bottle of wine and had the street musicians outside play happy birthday. Then we drank, but since we’d been abroad for a few months anyways, it was relaxed fun drinking, as opposed to the, I’m 21 now and can drink for the first time drinking. It was a great night.

April 1, 2005: This was my first birthday in Seattle. I had just ended an internship and was only working at Old Navy at this point. The night before, a few people from Old Navy went out, because it was my birthday and this other girl’s who worked there. I know that several respectable adults read this blog, and I hope they won’t mind when I report that I got so, so drunk that night. It was the kind of drunk that makes you swear you’ll never drink again. The kind of drunk where you wake up with 50-year-old men’s phone numbers in your pocket. The kind of drunk where you wake up with big bumps on your head and you remember that that’s from when your head hit the toilet the night before. Oh my.

The next day on this same year, the actual birthday, I woke up and took myself shopping. I only worked nights so I had some free time in the days. I went to the mall determined to buy something, but the only thing I could find that I really wanted was some underwear at Victoria’s Secret. Well, I get in line behind this VERY pregnant woman, and she and the salesgirl start talking about when she’s due, and they start talking about how HORRIBLE it would be if she gave birth on April First. So I finally had to pipe up and defend my birthday, and they both looked at me so sadly. Maybe because I was buying underwear on my birthday in a very hungover state. It’s hard to say.

On a side note, part of the reason I went to the mall is because I have this thing about food courts that you might have noticed in recent months. But that day is when I started to realize that West Coast food courts SUCKED.

Then (this was a pretty epic birthday) that night I went out for Mexican food with my friends Matthew, Nekesa and Katy. We went to a Seattle place called Tia Lou’s. When the waiters found out it was my birthday, they gave me this shot and then grabbed my head and shook it all around (let me tell you, I didn’t need that in the state I was in). Then, one of the waitstaff lifted up his apron and showed me this puppet penis. It was fake..he was wearing pants…but under the apron was a giant puppet penis. In talking to other people from Seattle, I hear this comes out a lot at bachelorette parties. But I got it for my birthday. Then Tia Lou’s went from being a respectable Mexican restaurant to a weird club with a high cover charge, so we watched that changeover for awhile before going back to google “puppet penis” and eat cake.


Well, I guess I’ll stop there. I certainly have other birthday memories, like the time I had a McDonald’s party and got to work the ice cream machine, the time I made my college roommate throw me a hot dog bowling party, the time my grandmother made me a ooey gooey chocolate cake, the time in which my boss made me a funfetti cake. And joining the ranks, the time in which my cable went out when all I wanted to do was watch television.